Our Story

The Day I Almost Didn't Notice

I wasn't trying to sell anything that day. I had two stops to make — first to see my shrink, the guy who manages my ADHD meds, and then out to Andy's Classic Mustangs in Spokane Valley to drop off some custom car show plaques they'd ordered. On the way out the door I threw one of my new prototype wallets into the front lapel pocket of my winter coat.

What I didn't know was that pocket had a hole in it. I also didn't know what was about to happen over the next three days.

The wallet slipped straight through the lining and got trapped down near my waist in the padding of the jacket. When I sat down in the chair at my appointment it was pressing into my back and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I asked the doc to give me a minute, took my coat off and started fishing around in the lining until I finally pulled the thing out.

That's when he saw it.

He asked what it was. I handed it to him and started explaining but he was already gone — playing with it like a kid who just found something under the Christmas tree. Opening it, snapping it shut, opening it again. He ordered one before I left. I delivered it two weeks later.

Back in the car I headed toward Andy's. About two blocks from his shop is one of my favorite coffee stands. I pulled up, ordered, and reached for my polished prototype to get my credit card out. The girl at the window asked about it. I handed her the sample I'd just gotten back from the doctor's office and she did the exact same thing — started playing with it, called her friend over, they both said they wanted one when I had production units ready.

I got to Andy's and delivered the plaques. Showed him the wallet. His daughter — she's in her forties, works the shop with him — came over to see what we were looking at, asked what it was, and ordered one on the spot. His son saw it and ordered two, both with custom engravings. When I came back a couple weeks later with their wallets, a friend of theirs happened to be there. He bought one too.

Three days after that I went to a football coaches meeting. Set my wallet on the table because it was on my keychain. One of the other coaches noticed it and ordered one.

Six wallets. Three days. I wasn't selling anything. I was just carrying it.

I drove home genuinely stunned. Not because of the money. Because I watched regular people — a psychiatrist, two coffee stand girls, a hot rod family, a football coach — light up over something I made with my own hands because I thought it was cool and wanted to see if I could pull it off.

That's still why I do this.

How It Actually Started

I wasn't making wallets, I was decorating them. Taking minimalist wallet blanks, machining custom designs into the aluminum side plates, upgrading the hardware, selling them as my own. Maybe two sales a month.

Then one of the big nameless corporations — the kind that sources Chinese blanks for two dollars and sells them for seventy-five — found me on Amazon and eBay and came after me hard. No conversation, no education, just a complaint and a shutdown. I pushed back. Said some things I probably shouldn't have. Then did my homework and realized they actually had the utility patent and I was technically wrong. Still think they were a word that ends in holes about it.

But getting shut down was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Because that's when I started thinking about a better mousetrap. No elastic bands. No Chinese blanks. No borrowed IP. Something entirely my own — designed around my arthritic hands that couldn't work those fiddly elastic band designs anyway. Something I'd machine myself from scratch on my own equipment. Something nobody could touch.

I went down the rabbit hole. Patent search. Design sketches. SolidWorks at midnight when my brain wouldn't shut off. Prototypes that didn't work. Prototypes that almost worked. Then one that did.

The N52 name came from the magnets — neodymium N52 grade, the strongest commercially available permanent magnets on earth. That's what holds this thing together. That's what makes the snap. That's what makes it different from every elastic band wallet on the market.

The patent is filed. The wallets are machined right here in North Idaho on equipment I own. I learned to build and fix things growing up on a ranch outside Great Falls, Montana — and never really stopped. Engineering school came later. CNC machines came after that. Throw in a brain that won't shut off and you've got a recipe for self induced insanity.

The Part I Didn't Expect

I'm not someone who had any idea if this thing would work. I've sold things my whole life. But selling was never the point. I genuinely didn't know if this wallet worked, if it was any good, or if people would think it was stupid. That first day answered all three questions at once.

And the reason I know it didn't go nowhere isn't because of the patent or the machining or the design. It's because of the look on people's faces when they pick it up for the first time. The snap. The weight. The moment they realize some guy actually made this — by hand, on a real machine, in a real shop, in Idaho.

That look is the whole thing for me.

The Part Nobody Tells You

I'll be honest with you. I'm more afraid of this thing succeeding than I am of it failing. I know exactly what to do when something doesn't work — that's been most of my life and I've gotten pretty good at it. But this? I don't have a playbook for this.

One guy. One shop. A trainwreck of a brain that wastes hundreds of hours on ideas that go nowhere — except this one. At 59 years old I've run out of illusions. I know what I am and I know what this is. A real thing, made by real hands, that people actually want.

I'm still a little surprised.

— Jody